Description of the Prior Art
Disk drives typically include one or more magnetic disks and a multiplicity of magnetic head arm assemblies. The head arm assemblies comprise head slider elements that are mounted to flexures or suspensions. Thin film transducers are disposed on the ends of rails formed along the air bearing surface (ABS) of a head slider, whereby the the thin film transducers can coact with selected data tracks on the disks for recording and reading data.
The magnetic head sliders are designed to fly as close as possible over the disk surfaces during the accessing and read/write modes. Various shapes and geometries of the slider have been proposed to achieve a desired low flying height. Examples of typical head sliders are described and illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,855,625 and 4,420,780.
During manufacture of the head assemblies, a multiplicity of sliders are made from a ceramic bar that is lapped to obtain a predetermined throat height of the thin film transducers. The lapping procedure can be used to shape the ABS and longitudinal rails on which the thin film transducers are located and thus configure the aerodynamic surface of the slider. For example, one slider configuration incorporates a crown shape which must be made within specified technical tolerances. For this purpose the lapping operation needs to be tightly controlled in order to realize a high yield and high production rate with resultant good quality head sliders.
Also, during the lapping operations of the slider, polishing materials are used that must be removed from the head flexure assembly (HFA) prior to installation in a disk drive. The cleansing operation also needs to be well controlled to avoid damage and to remove residual contaminants from the head arm assemblies.
A conventional magnetic head production line is generally designed with production line tables that are placed parallel to each other wherein each step of the assembly process is successively accomplished in a linear progression as the workpieces are moved from one station to the next. It has been found that this arrangement requires excessive space and undue handling when transferring the workpieces from one table to the next.